Monthly Archives: February 2019

Resurrected Victims is a Korean movie where the mother of a prosecutor comes back to life and tries to get revenge on the people that killed her. All signs point to the son who did it and the movie tells what happens as they unravel this mysterious incidence. The movie says that there have been 89 victims who have come back to life in order to kill their murderers before disappearing in a burst of flames.

The movie spends the rest of the time investigating why the mom came back through a variety of flashbacks before finally explaining what happened. The story-telling was pretty poor – I’m not sure whether they did that for suspense or if it was just a bad script, because it’s easy to explain what happened once you know the entire story. The movie also tacks on a moral message as part of its ending, which is a bit lame.

I don’t think this movie was that great, only a two out of five stars from me.

I think I’ve seen portions of the Teen Titans TV show while vacationing with the kids, but I haven’t watched enough to know what their mannerisms and songs are. So going into this movie blind, it felt like there were a lot of in-jokes that missed. That’s ok though because this is a kids movie (like a real one, not a Pixar one) so you can just jump in and out of it.

I guess the best way to put this is that they took the “Teen” Titans and made them 6 years old, complete with the potty jokes. The plot revolves around the other DC heroes having movies made about them, while Robin desperately wants one (as he sees that as legitimizing him as a superhero). So he does whatever he has to do to get a movie, involves the villain Deathstroke (except they can’t call him that so they just use his normal name Slade), and then learns a life lesson.

There are a lot of DC heroes in Teen Titans Go To The Movies, the Justice League act like adults and behave as you would expect kids to see adults. The action is crazy and nonsensical (even though it is a cartoon, it’s not a Into The Spiderverse level of movie). However, it was fun even for adults. Three out of five.

I’m not sure why they did this movie. I guess they went through all the A-list Marvel properties and now they’re working on the B-list (see The Wasp). Thing number 2 is that Venom‘s story is so intertwined with Spider-Man that it feels very weird that he is not in this film. I think they made up a new backstory for him to get away from the world of Spider-Man.

Without the foil of Peter Parker, the story of Venom is not compelling. It’s a lot of Eddie Brock talking to himself. It also makes the ultimate bad guy and who to root for confusing (since in the typical story, you’re hoping that Spider-Man wins). Based on the post-credits scene, it sounds like they are trying to build a new mini-series with Carnage next (or it could just be a sequel like what they did with the Winter Soldier). I also found the Stan Lee scene to be dumb and useless. His cameos were funny the first couple of times, but now it is just wasting screen time. I guess this was his last one unless CG shenanigans are in the works.

The plot ends up being relatively faithful to Venom’s first story (revolves around a spaceship). But everything else around it smells weird. Glad I watched it for free as it is two out of five stars for me.

I watched the first Fantastic Four movie (with Jessica Alba), and even the second one; and given the critical reception of them, I’m not sure why they decided to remake it. The group is not popular or well known either. However, it is one of the last Marvel films I haven’t seen so I took a try on it. I didn’t know that this version was a teen movie though (and I don’t recognize the cast except for Michael B. Jordan).

The movie is pretty short (around 90mins) which doesn’t give a lot of time to do anything after explaining how the crew got their powers. Dr Doom shows up, they have a quick battle to save the day, and the movie is done. If I wasn’t familiar with the characters, I would have thought that there wasn’t much substance to the movie. However, since I know the FF, it was a fun romp in expected territory. This movie gets three out of five stars from me (not any worse or any better than the first run through).

I used to follow a blog about an English call girl which was named this, and I wonder if this old movie was the source of the name. This movie is about a young wife in the 60s (movie was made in 1967) who moonlights (daylights?) as a call girl. It’s not really raunchy but more of a look at what French society was like back then – gender stereotypes and retro cars abound.

The movie also reminded me of how slow movies were back then. Unlike The Godfather though, Belle De Jour wasn’t able to set the mood to make the slow scenes feel immersive. The plot was also a bit weird as it pushed character development by introducing different Johns, before events force the final scene. While it made sense, the way that it was told felt disjointed. Interesting to watch but not fun, two out of five stars.

The Titanic Was On Fire For Days Before The Iceberg Hit
Might just be a crazy theory, but a fire could have contributed to a sinking of the Titanic. What’s most fascinating about this story (and a rabbit hole in itself) is that a coal fire is almost impossible to put out (and how does burning the coal in a furnace help??)

An example of the difficulties with a coal fire would be the coal fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania. This fire broke out in a mine in the Northeast United States and has proven impossible to put out. How impossible you ask? It’s been burning since May 27, 1962.
Yes, I’m being totally serious, it’s been burning for 56 years.

Despite numerous efforts to deal with the fire, nothing has been able to stop it. It’s estimated that some sections where the fire is burning are about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and put up lethal gas clouds of carbon monoxide. Eventually, the federal government gave up trying to put out the fire and just bought all the land from the inhabitants, who moved. Centralia is now a tourist attraction, where visitors come to see the smoke and abandoned buildings.

On Lyst.com, the fashion shopping aggregator, plastic sandals by Givenchy and Gucci routinely top the most sought after product category.

Premium mediocre in fashion is not a new phenomenon. During the ‘80s some Parisian couturiers licensed their name to mass market manufacturers. All of a sudden office workers could buy fifty-dollar Pierre Cardin button-up shirts. What followed was brand dilution and the perception that those names were no longer associated with luxury.

Technology, Ranked
This, in practice, seems like a good idea. But it felt like it was written by a snarky teenager with an over emphasis on 21st century changes. Also, I don’t think a paragraph on each idea gives it enough justice, I guess we need a book about most important inventions of all time.

57. Radar

Radar literally won the war for the Allies in World War II. I mean, that’s the story we’re told. And it’s nearly true. So, um, thanks radar? Otherwise we might be living in an alternate reality world where a Nazi sympathizer was in the White House. What a nightmare.

Giant, a local supermarket chain, ran a contest in 2017 to determine which neighborhood was the most kiasu. The winner, an eastern town called Tampines, impressed with a high percentages of residents admitting to excessively pressing the crosswalk button.

They also fessed up in large numbers to reserving tables at busy coffee shops with a tissue packet or umbrella rather than more considerately ordering their food first and then finding a place to sit — a widespread practice known in Singlish as chope (You can also chope a parking space by having someone stand in it).

As it turned out, Mir Islam posed a flight risk. Only two months after getting out of prison, he left the US in violation of the terms of his release. Islam slipped past immigration by claiming to be someone else: his younger brother, who is confusingly also named Mir Islam, and presenting that Mir Islam’s Bangladeshi passport as his own. According to Philippine government records, the older Mir Islam, posing as his younger brother, arrived in the country on July 24, 2018.

Another movie that has been hanging on my “to watch on a flight” list, and survived until I actually had time to watch it; given its longevity, I thought that Bleeding Steel must be a masterpiece with a lot of views amongst flyers. I mean, it has to be good if the synopsis is that Jackie Chan fights a bunch of bionic bad guys, right?

As you can expect, it was a bit weird. It wasn’t a serious movie but whatever attempt at incorporating HK cinema humor got lost in translation somewhere. Instead, what they did bring was the B-level villains from Chinese period films into a production that was like The Adventurers – a Chinese film set in the Western world. The majority of the film takes place in Australia and the language was fluid – I didn’t keep track of how often they switched between Mandarin and English, but I did notice the accented English from the Chinese actors.

I’m not sure that this movie would play well with theatre-goers as the only thing it has going for it is Jackie Chan (and isn’t his brand of comedic Kung Fu fighting getting tiresome?) Two out of five stars for me

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Mission Impossible, or a Tom Cruise movie. This movie has been sitting in the inflight entertainment for awhile and there was always something a little better to watch. Finally, I ran out of movies and ended up watching Mission: Impossible – Fallout (how are you even supposed to write the name as it has two modifiers).

While there haven’t been as many MI movies, I would guess that this is the American version of the Bond movies. Where Bond has his gadgets, MI seems more gritty and athletic – the most memorable scene I have from all MI movies is the second one where Cruise is climbing a cliff. But, that difference has never made the MI movies that much more fun to me.

I was pleasantly surprised by how this film turned out. It started off pretty clichéd and I thought it was going to be a snore (give up and try another movie). And then Superman (Henry Cavil but it felt like the same characterization) showed up. But as we got into it, the story improved a lot. I forgot that one key element of the MI series is the espionage and double crosses – it’s like mini Ocean’s 11 throughout. I’m sure the scenarios don’t make sense under scrutiny but when you’re watching the movie, it’s fun. Even though it ran significantly over 2 hours, the plot felt pretty tight.

This MI also drew elements from previous movies. Seems like that is something that it shares with the Bond series. At least with Bond, there have been 10s of movies to refer to, so this is a little premature for MI. But then maybe this is the movie version of the greatest hits album, and if they don’t make a retrospective movie now, the actors will get too old.

All in all, a surprisingly good action film from a movie franchise that I’ve long forgotten. Three out of five stars.

I’m a late adopter to OTT video (still no Netflix account & etc) and it has only been recently that I started using the CBC app to watch shows on my TV. And soon after I started, it went through a rebranding to be called Gem.

Now Gem is a weird name for video streaming, but I can understand why they might want to call it that. Gem makes it seem like the service is rare and valuable; plus it is quick to say. But I just can’t relate to it well.

Nevertheless, it is decent and useful. There is a lot of content and I wish there was some way to favorite so that I could build up a playlist and come back to it later. Best thing is that it’s free (although I suppose I pay taxes).

Oops, bad start to the new year as I forgot to write my recap for January. That’s surprising as a lot of stuff happened in January and it actually felt like two months. The new year started uneventful as was the rest of Christmas vacation (Apollo had a couple of play dates). Then the next week, I few to Las Vegas for CES.

Now that I’ve been to CES a few times, I realize it’s more of a sales conference than anything else. It’s not that fun for me and it is just another place I have to do work. The travel is also very hectic because there are a ton of people who are flying down for the same things and the flights are packed, everyone has status etc.

After coming back home, we started our winter term activities on the weekends. This year, Apollo and Jovian are going to different programs so Pauline and I take them to different places on the weekends.

This month was also a “typical winter” with lots of snow. After a couple of snowfalls, the snowbanks around our driveway quickly grew taller than the kids. The snowfall was followed by extreme cold as a Polar vortex descended on most of Canada. For Toronto, temperatures during the day was in the -15°C to -20°C range (before windchill) and night times were into the -30°Cs.

In this month, I also found a way to “break” the Star Trek game that I’m playing. Usually when I’m able to figure out a way to accelerate the progress through the game like this, my enjoyment will fizzle out (apparently doing something challenging is more fun). I’m still trying to hold on to the game by not abusing my power but it might be time to move on soon.